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Editor's Note:
Jorge Dávila Miguel has a degree in Journalism since 1973 and has maintained a continuous career in his profession to date.
He has postgraduate degrees in Social Information Sciences and Social Media, as well as post-university higher studies in International Relations, Political Economy and Latin American History.
Currently, Dávila Miguel is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald, on the McClatchy network, and a political analyst and columnist for CNN en Español.
The comments expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author.
See more at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) -
2020 is running out and for many it is a year that should be erased from history.
Year of absences and pain.
Of fatal predictions fulfilled and threats, of how the American dream could gradually turn into a nightmare, and of how death was for more than 330,000 inhabitants of the country.
It has been a year of pain, uncertainty and death.
But since nothing can be completely erased from the past, 2020 will remain there, in place, after 2019 and before 2021. Filed up, a bit sweaty and also ashamed, as if to hide his head, with what he brought to the world in his 366 days of existence and especially to the United States.
As the pandemic grew dangerous, we were also infected with "American exceptionalism."
I remember saying to Carmen Rosa, my wife, one day when the television news became even more worrying: “Well, whatever happens, whatever the virus comes, we are in the best country in the world to face it.
We have all the technology and all the preparation, we have the CDC!
Do you remember the movie “Outbreak” –– I said –– with Dustin Hofffman as an expert on contagious diseases?
At the end of the day, we are neither more nor less than in the United States ”.
And I sat, more than reassured, sleepy, to continue watching the news, imagining tens of thousands of Dustin Hofmann intelligently fighting any epidemic that dared to mess with the country.
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Today again I am surprised with that nonsense.
The Washington Post newspaper publishes that on January 13, 2020, the World Health Organization published a test design protocol to detect covid-19.
Various countries wasted no time getting started.
Meanwhile, those at the CDC set out to create a more ambitious and complicated test that, coupled with problems from a contaminated lab, resulted in it taking 46 days to develop.
Thai scientists, for example, took only hours to start with the WHO instructions to accomplish the new test, the newspaper reports.
Today Thailand reports just 60 deaths from covid-19, with about 70 million inhabitants, while the United States ranks number one, with more than 338,000 deaths in more than 330 million inhabitants.
A good difference, perhaps achieved thanks to "American exceptionalism", a doctrine that explains the superiority, the loftiness of purpose and the ability to decide, of those who live and decide in the United States.
But what happened this time?
Did being exceptional work for us?
Is it true that we are exceptional?
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But just as there were great defeats, penalties and mistakes for the population of this country in 2020, there was also a great triumph.
The most important.
What is expected for the country with the history of the longest, most solid and efficient democratic system.
The attempt to return to political normality, to decency, to social commitment.
Because current President Donald J. Trump was defeated both in the electoral vote (by 74 delegates) and in the popular vote (by more than 7 million people).
That shows that the system worked and safeguarded the possibility of political stability for the United States.
Or at least aim for it.
The elected and upcoming Biden administration has a fundamental task to unite the American people again.
Not a political and ideological union in a country radically divided by the 2020 elections, which gave Donald J Trump - let's not forget - more than 62 million votes.
This continues to be a strong support for the now defeated candidate in the US electoral vote, with the most turnout at the polls in the entire history of this country.
What will 2024 bring us?
A new attempt by Trump to seize power?
It depends on Trump's political coherence, increasingly damaged in his constant delegitimization of the American electoral process.
But it also depends on Biden, on his success in the mandate given to him by the people.
Let's wait to see what 2021 really brings us.